The 1814 British Empire Invasion of Baltimore, Maryland: The Battle of Fort McHenry

[simplesimon]

In this very month of August 1814, the young new Democracy capital of Washington, D.C. was invaded by the British Empire and burned to the ground. Many citizens and the US army fled north to Baltimore, Maryland. The city would be the next to be on the advancing British army list to be destroyed. Citizens, militiamen, and the soldiers dug defensive lines called earthworks to defend the city. It was in the month of September 1814, that the brave men of Fort McHenry would be the decisive difference maker in stopping the advancing British military might.

[ThankyouArt!]

In this very month of August 1814, the young new Democracy capital of Washington, D.C. was invaded by the British Empire and burned to the ground. Many citizens and the US army fled north to Baltimore, Maryland. The city would be the next to be on the advancing British army list to be destroyed. Citizens, militiamen, and the soldiers dug defensive lines called earthworks to defend the city. It was in the month of September 1814, that the brave men of Fort McHenry would be the decisive difference maker in stopping the advancing British military might.

The British burned down the Capitol.......The continental congress moved north ahead of the British invasion, Baltimore was temporarily now the young nations capitol. Baltimore was then the target of the British military. Britain was still miffed from getting beat by some local commoners just 30 or so years earlier. They used that time to build their army and military and came ready to take back what they thought was theirs.

The attack on Baltimore came in a two prong attack ( often overlooked because of the attack on Ft. McHenry) There was a land attack that started in the area we now know that is called Edgemere.......or North Point. The property was owned by the Todd family. A wealthy family that basically owned the entire peninsula. Several ships landed there and troops came to sure to march West to attack Baltimore form the East. These troops were led by a very well experienced commander named Major General Robert Ross, he was thought of by his troops as being the "George Washington" of Britain. His troops extremely loyal and would fiercely fight for him.

The troops marched and were met by the American commander General John Stricker who led a group of local militia. The now famous battle has become known as the Battle of North Point. At that battle a young sniper reported to be around 14 years old shot and fell Ross from atop of his horse. The word of Ross's demise quickly spread through the ranks of the British force. The American militia more then held their own against the Brits. The British troops quickly become demoralized without their leader and lost the battle. While heading back to their ships they looted and burned farm houses along the way.

While this was taking place the Battle of Ft. McHenry was taking place. We all know what happened there. If it wasn't for the citizens of North Point and Baltimore we would all probably still be under British rule. It should be known that Congress left Baltimore and went to Philadelphia. When the Battle of Baltimore was over Congress thought about staying in Philly and making it the new permanent capitol of the United States. Nut alas that decided to go back to Washington.

I think it is of importance to recognize Baltimore of not only that war but to the city itself. At that time Baltimore was the biggest port in the country and the second biggest city behind New York. Geographically Baltimore's port was the port located furthest west out of all the East coast ports. Which made the distance to points west shorter in distance. That was until the advent of the locomotive which evened the playing field.

Footnote, Baltimore was founded by King George, the appeal for George to the region was it's soil and climate. It was perfect for growing tobacco. Tobacco was a new expensive commodity. The entire area of Baltimore city what we know today was nothing but tobacco fields.......as far as the eyes could see. In fact the entire state of Maryland was once known for having some of the best tobacco grown in the united states. I believe there are still a couple farms in the Eastern shore that may still grow tobacco.......there are still a few drying barns around as well.

So there you go.....

[ThankyouArt!]

Sorry about the grammar in my last post, I know Baltimore but I have horrible grammar. We can all thank the wonderful Baltimore county school system for that.

Another fun fact........since we're talking Baltimore , the shot tower in Baltimore at the time it was completed ( 1828) was the tallest structure in the United States at the time? Charles Carroll laid the first brick, Charles Carroll was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence at that time. if you didn't know Carroll county was named after him, he was also the richest man in America at that point.

The tower was built with 1.1 million bricks. Anyone know why it's called the "Shot Tower" and what it's purpose was? They would heat molten lead in the top of the tower, not sure if it's still there but they once had lights up there that were reddish/orange simulating fire. At the top of the tower a worker would take a long handled ladle with hot molten lead and pour it. As the lead would fall through the air it would spin making small lead balls.......or "shot" for ammunition. At the bottom of the tower there were troughs of water to catch and cool the balls of lead.

There were multiple times that demolition was proposed by the city. Thankfully the citizens of Baltimore has saved it from the wrecking ball.

How about the Baltimore fire of 1903.......it was started at a mattress factory where the current Civic center.......or whatever they are calling it today. Someone threw a cigarette, lit match or emptied a pipe out the window and caught some mattress stuffing on fire. The fire burned for a few days. Fire companies came from as far as Philadelphia from the north, Washington DC from the south, Frederic from the west and all points in between. The biggest problem was that many of the fire companies couldn't hook up to the fire hydrants because they all had different hydrant connectors. Which hampered their efforts to extinguish the flames. Because of this after the fire the United States adopted a uniform fire hydrant and connectors across the country.

The fire burned east across the city, most of the buildings north in the inner harbor area have all been built after the fire. Most of the historic buildings and homes were razed. The fireman were able to stop the flames at the Jones falls. Back then it was like a large stream that flowed south in to the harbor. They were able to keep the fire from jumping the banks of Jones Falls and spread to Little Italy. Many of the homes in Little Italy are built in the early mid 19th century.

There was only one fatality from the fire. A man and his horse was caught out on a pier that had burned and they both went in to the harbor and drowned.

[ThankyouArt!]

You want more Baltimore history? Baltimore itself was just one town of three towns that consisted of what we know of Baltimore today. In the 18th century there were three towns.......Baltimore, most of us know the second town.....Fells Point. If you didn't know, Fells Point is named after a sea William Fell, the two street were named after his daughters......Ann, Aliceanna. The third town was called Jones Town.....named after the Jones falls. Jones Town started around where the Shot Tower is and went north past where the old city jail is. East to Broadway.

For those who don't know Baltimore was a port of call from it's very beginning. Goods shipped in and out to ports all over the world. The city was basically nothing but sailors. Which is how the "Block" got it's start. Sailors coming in to port wanted to drink and spend some time with a female companion. Later the block was a huge Vaudeville destination and the biggest acts in the country performed there.

Baltimore was the port, and Fells Point was the ship building town. They not only built some of the best cargo carrying sail ships of the day. When ships came in to the Baltimore port and needed repairs after sailing across the Atlantic it would go to Fells point for those repairs.
By horse back it would take an hour or two to ride from Baltimore town to Fells point then to Jones Town. They all were growing rapidly. When the edges of town were touching each other. Then at some point the city of Baltimore incorporated Fells Point and Jones Town in to it's city limits.

[ThankyouArt!]

Want more Baltimore history?

Anyone notice the H&S Bakery in the fells Point area? Near Broadway? The Paterakis family started the H&S bakery. It got it's start in the basement selling bread in 1943. It grew in to the largest family owned bakery in the country, they own Schmidts bakery and a couple others. What's even more interesting is that almost all of the property located where "Harbor East" is, is all owned by the Paterakis family. The Four Seasons hotel? All of that area.......is all owned by them. They lease the property to all of the businesses.

They provide baked goods to stadiums, hospitals etc.

[ThankyouArt!]

Baltimore was the location of the very first Catholic cathedral in the United States, Basillica of the National Shrine of the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Baltimore........a mouth full I know. Thomas Jefferson had a hand in it's design.

In 1891 the very first ordination of a African American priest took place there. The 2011 Baltimore earthquake damm neared destroyed it. 1000 linear feet of cracks were discovered. It proceeded a 3 million dollar repair job.

[ThankyouArt!]

Want more?

The Washington Monument on Calvert Street was the first Washington monument in the United States, it was designed by a Robert Mills and opened in 1828. Robert Mills also designed the Washington Monument in Washington DC.

[ThankyouArt!]

Anybody hear of Green Mount cemetery? Many famous people are buried there......besides John Wilks Booth of the Lincoln assassination fame there are many others such as John Hopkins and many others. Here's a list.......how many do you know?

Arunah Abell (1808–1888), journalist, newspaper publisher.
William Julian Albert (1816–1879), U.S. Congressman.
Harry W. Archer Jr. (died 1910), American politician and lawyer[4]
Henry W. Archer (1813–1887), American politician and lawyer[5]
James J. Archer (1860–1921), American politician[6]
Samuel Arnold (1834–1906), Lincoln assassination conspirator.
James Bankhead (1783–1856), U. S. Army General that served in the War of 1812, Second Seminole War, and Mexican–American War.
Robert T. Banks (1822–1901), Mayor of Baltimore[7]
Daniel Moreau Barringer (1806–1873), a United States Congressman and diplomat.
James Lawrence Bartol (1813–1887), American jurist[8]
Joseph Colt Bloodgood (1867–1935), American surgeon[9]
A. Aubrey Bodine (1906–1970), photographer.
Elizabeth ("Betsy") Patterson Bonaparte (1785–1879), Baltimore-born wife of Napoleon's brother, Jérôme Bonaparte.
Carroll Bond (1873–1943), jurist.[10]
Elijah Bond, (1847–1921), lawyer and inventor.
Asia Frigga (Booth) Clarke, (1835–1888), author and sister of John Wilkes Booth.
John Wilkes Booth (1838–1865), assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.
Junius Brutus Booth (1796–1852), English actor.
Augustus Bradford (1806–1881), Governor of Maryland.
Joseph Lancaster Brent (1826–1905) lawyer and politician in California, Louisiana and Maryland, and general in the Confederate army.
Jesse D. Bright (1812–1875), United States Senator from Indiana.
Nathan C. Brooks (1809–1898), American educator, historian and poet[11]
Frank Brown (1846–1920), Governor of Maryland[12]
Edward Nathaniel Brush (1852–1933), psychiatrist and superintendent of the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital[13]
James M. Buchanan (1803–1876), judge and United States Ambassador to Denmark.
James Buck (1808–1865), American Civil War Medal of Honor recipient.
John Archibald Campbell (1811–1889), United States Supreme Court Justice.
John Lee Chapman (1811–1880), Mayor of Baltimore, glass maker, railroad executive.[14]
George Colton (1817–1898), member of the Maryland House of Delegates[15]
Albert Constable (1805–1855), member of the U.S. House of Representatives[16]
Henry Winter Davis (1817–1865), U.S. Congressman for Maryland's 3rd District, 1863–65.
William Daniel, state legislator and Prohibition Party vice presidential candidate, 1884.
Allen Welsh Dulles (1893–1969), director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a member of the Warren Commission.
Wendell E. Dunn (1894–1965), educator and principal of Forest Park High School.
Wendell E. Dunn, Jr. (1922–2007), metallurgist and chemical engineer.
Thomas Dunn (1925–2008), musician and conductor.
Johnny Eck (1911–1991), American freak show performer born without legs.
Arnold Elzey (1816–1871), Confederate Civil War general.
George F. Emmons (1811–1884), Rear Admiral, United States Navy.
D. Hopper Emory (1841–1916), Maryland state senator[17]
George Hyde Fallon (1902–1980), U.S. Congressman, 4th District of Maryland.
Henry D. Farnandis (1817–1900), Maryland state politician and lawyer.[18]
Charles W. Field (1857–1917), Maryland state delegate.[19]
Elizabeth Gault Fisher (1909–2000), entomologist, bacteriologist, and bryologist.
Richard Fuller (1804–1876), minister and founder of the Southern Baptist movement.[20]
William H.B. Fusselbaugh, member of the Maryland House of Delegates[21]
Charles D. Gaither (1860–1947), U.S. Army officer, Baltimore police commissioner, member of the Maryland House of Delegates[22]
George M. Gill (1803–1887), lawyer.
James Hall (1802–1889), founder of Maryland-in-Africa[23]
Robert G. Harper (1765–1825), United States Senator from Maryland.
Solomon Hillen Jr. (1810–1873), Mayor of Baltimore, U.S. Representative from Maryland, member of the Maryland House of Delegates[24]
Johns Hopkins (1795–1873), businessman and philanthropist. His bequests helped found the Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Benjamin Chew Howard (1791–1872), a congressman and reporter of decisions of the United States Supreme Court
Benjamin Huger (1805–1877), a career United States Army ordnance officer and a Confederate general in the American Civil War.
Jesse Hunt (1793–1872), mayor of Baltimore.[25]
Obed Hussey (1792–1860), inventor and rival of Cyrus McCormick.
Henry Barton Jacobs (1858–1939), physician and educator[26]
John Hanson Thomas Jerome (1816–1863), Mayor of Baltimore[27]
Reverdy Johnson (1796–1876), statesman, United States Senator and United States Attorney General.
Joseph Eggleston Johnston (1807–1891), military officer in the Confederate States Army.
Isaac Dashiell Jones (1806–1893), U.S. Congressman[28]
Anthony Kennedy (1810–1892), United States Senator.
John P. Kennedy (1795–1870), congressman and United States Secretary of the Navy.
Harriet Lane (1830–1903), niece of President James Buchanan, acted as First Lady of the United States from 1857 to 1861.
Sidney Lanier (1842–1881), musician and poet.
Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Jr. (1806–1878), civil engineer and Green Mount's landscape architect.[29]
Ferdinand Claiborne Latrobe (1833–1911), Mayor of Baltimore and speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates[30]
John H. B. Latrobe (1803–1891), lawyer and inventor.[31]
James O. Law (1809–1847), Mayor of Baltimore and merchant.[32][33]
James Fenner Lee (1843–1898), member of the Maryland Senate[34]
Walter Lord (1917–2002), author, best known for his book on the sinking of the RMS Titanic, A Night to Remember.
John Gresham Machen (1881–1937), Presbyterian theologian and founder of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
John MacTavish (1787–1852), British Consul to Maryland in the 1840s.
Charles Marshall (1830–1902), colonel in the Confederate States Army, aide de camp, assistant adjutant general, and military secretary for the Army of Northern Virginia and Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Theodore R. McKeldin (1900–1974), Mayor of Baltimore and Governor of Maryland.
Louis McLane (1786–1857), United States Congressman from Delaware, United States Secretary of the Treasury, and later the United States Secretary of State.
Robert Milligan McLane (1815–1898), Governor of Maryland.
Louis Wardlaw Miles (1873–1944), World War I Medal of Honor Recipient.
Arthur C. Needles (1867–1936), president of the Norfolk and Western Railroad.
John Nelson (1794–1860), United States Attorney General.
Benjamin Franklin Newcomer (1827–1901), railroad executive and bank president.[35]
Harry W. Nice (1877–1941), Governor of Maryland.
Daniel S. Norton (1829–1870), United States Senator from Minnesota.
Michael O'Laughlen (1840–1867), Lincoln assassination conspirator.
Enoch Pratt (1808–1896), businessman and philanthropist, founder of Baltimore's public library system and co-founder of the Sheppard Pratt Hospital.
James H. Preston (1860–1938), 35th Mayor of Baltimore.
James R. Price (1862–1929), sports journalist and executive.
Edward Coote Pinkney (1802–1828), poet.
John P. Poe, Sr. (1836–1909), Attorney General of Maryland, 1891–95.
Isaac Freeman Rasin (1833–1907), Baltimore politician and political boss[36]
William Henry Rinehart (1825–1874), sculptor.[37]
Cadwalader Ringgold (1802–1867), U.S. Navy officer.
Albert C. Ritchie (1876–1936), Governor of Maryland, 1920–35.
Winford Henry Smith (1877–1961), physician.[38]
William Wallace Spence (1815–1915), financier.[39]
Major General George H. Steuart (1790–1867), a United States Army general in the War of 1812.
George H. Steuart (1828–1903), Confederate Civil War general.
Thomas Swann (1809–1883), Governor of Maryland, 1866–69, U.S. Congressman for Maryland's 3rd and 4th Districts, 1869–79, Mayor of Baltimore, 1856–60.
Joseph Pembroke Thom (1828–1899), member of the Maryland House of Delegates, military officer in the Mexican–American War and Confederate States Army.[40]
Isaac R. Trimble (1802–1888), U.S. Army officer, civil engineer, railroad construction superintendent and executive, and a Confederate general in the Civil War.
Daniel Turner (1794–1850), United States Navy officer during the War of 1812.
Erastus B. Tyler (1822–1891), Union Army general in the American Civil War.
Martha Ellicott Tyson (1795–1873), Quaker elder, author, and co-founder of Swarthmore College.
John B. Van Meter (1842–1930) U.S. Navy chaplain, academic, and co-founder of Goucher College.
Joshua Van Sant (1803–1884), Mayor of Baltimore.[41]
John Carroll Walsh (1816–1894), state senator[42]
Henry Walters (1848–1931), president of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, art collector whose bequest to the City of Baltimore in 1931 started the Walters Art Museum.
William Thompson Walters (1820–1894), liquor distributor, banker, railroad magnate and art collector.
Teackle Wallis Warfield (1869–1896) Father of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor. Wife of Prince Edward Duke of Windsor.
William Pinkney Whyte (1824–1908), Maryland State Delegate, State Comptroller, a United States Senator, the State Governor, the Mayor of Baltimore, and State Attorney General.
Joseph Pere Bell Wilmer (1812–1878), Episcopal bishop of Louisiana.
John H. Winder (1800–1865), Confederate general during the Civil War.

[ThankyouArt!]

That's enough......lol

Yes, I love Baltimore......my mother was born in a row house on Biddle st. I was named after John Unitas. I speak with a VERY VERY heavy Baltimore accent but was born and raised in Essex.......LOL

Sorry for hijacking the thread but Simon struck a nerve.........My favorite topic. I have tons more but I think I probably glazed enough eyes over for the day.

Go O's!

[simplesimon]

Sorry for the late response. I've been busy the past few days with real life. Thanks for a lot of the info. Baltimore has a rich history. Now if only to get the young ones away from the corrupt influence that pervades the city and steer them to a safer future.

[Forgettable1]

That's enough......lol

Yes, I love Baltimore......my mother was born in a row house on Biddle st. I was named after John Unitas. I speak with a VERY VERY heavy Baltimore accent but was born and raised in Essex.......LOL

Sorry for hijacking the thread but Simon struck a nerve.........My favorite topic. I have tons more but I think I probably glazed enough eyes over for the day.

Go O's!

Care to recommend a book on Baltimore or Maryland history?

[Forgettable1]

As a teenager, my father worked on truck delivering oil (or should I pronounce it "ool"?) Whenever I would chauffeur him from here to there he would comment, "I remember when this used to be a...."

Years ago I learned the Pratt Library had an archive of old telephone books. I always thought it would be a neat idea to cross-reference those old telephone books with Google Maps. I see "ghost signs" -- faded advertising paint on the walls of buildings that used to house a business -- and wonder more about those businesses and what I might NOT be seeing.